South Korea warns North against new provocations

SINGAPORE: South Korea warned on Saturday that it would respond "very strongly" to any further provocations by North Korea. "If there are future provocations, I don't think we can be reserved because it would be hard to suppress them because they're getting bolder and bolder," South Korean Minister of National Defence Kim Kwan-Jin said. Speaking at a regional security conference in Singapore, Kim said "we are trying to be proactively deterrent" in dealing with the communist North. "So proactive deterrence means that if there is a provocation we will respond very strongly as an exercise of our jurisdiction rights, and we will defuse those provocative intents," Kim said through an interpreter. The South Korean government was lambasted for its reserved response last year to the North's shelling of the border island of Yeongpyeong as well as the sinking of the battleship Cheon...